Zoo Wars:
Know Your Enemy:
Ryan had hand-delivered six tiger cubs. However, dragging
those bloody bundles of teeth and claws from their barely-sedated mothers had
never chilled him like a visit to his boss’s office. He knocked nervously on
the heavy door, on which was screwed a brass nameplate: Victor Tasman BA, Managing Director, Sherwell Zoo.
“Come in” Ryan opened the door to find the slender figure of
Victor slouched in a high-backed chair, fiddling with a silver lighter in the
shape of a revolver. “Sit down Ryan.” Victor commanded. Ryan sat. “You’re
probably wondering why I’ve called you in today” Victor gestured at Ryan with
the lighter. Ryan, momentarily unsettled by the sight of his boss waving a
gun-shaped object at his head, nodded.
“Well, I’ll answer your question with one of my own. What
does Sherwell Zoo mean to you Ryan?”
While he enjoyed his work as Head Keeper, Ryan first and
foremost saw his job as a deal-clincher with animal-loving girls at local bars.
Knowing that this was not the answer Victor sought, he fumbled for a more noble
sentiment: “Er, a place for conservation, a place where people can come to
explore nature, um, a job, I suppose…”
“Interesting.” Victor pocketed the lighter, stood up and
walked to his window. “To me, it means something different. Something…grander”
He turned to face Ryan, silhouetted in the evening sun. Affecting a slight New
York Italian accent, he spoke: “It means family. And I don’t just mean the
people. I mean the animals. Each and every last one of them, from the elephants
down to little Billy Fins here.” Victor gestured to a bug-eyed goldfish
swimming around a granite bust of Al Pacino as Scarface. “Do you have a family
Ryan?” Victor strode over to Ryan and placed a hand on the back of his chair,
peering down at his employee with an unflinching gaze.
“No, I don’t.”
Victor sighed and returned to his chair. “Sadly, there is
someone out there who I have reason to believe intends to harm my family. And I
have called you here to ask you for your help in protecting Sherwell Zoo.” Ryan
swallowed hard. “Ryan, my boy, I have always seen great potential in you. You
know that this zoo has a rival. Namely, the Sherwell Valley Wildlife
Experience. For five years, this two-bit menagerie has done me a grave insult
by its presence. Now, I have had enough.”
Victor leaned across his desk conspiratorially “In short,
Ryan, I am declaring war on the Market Sherwell Wildlife Experience” Incredulity
crept across Ryan’s face. “I am enlisting you as my second-in-command.”
“You will be my man on the ground: my enforcer,
co-ordinating this campaign. Will you accept this responsibility?”
“What will happen if I refuse?” Ryan asked, his throat dry.
“Would you refuse this task? You would refuse to protect
your family?” Victor emphasised the last word, clenching his fist slightly as
he spoke.
Ryan was momentarily silent, then, unable to bear the
tension any longer, he stammered, “I – I suppose not. I – I’ll do it.”
“A fine choice Ryan. You may leave now, I trust you will not
let me down.”
The Spoonbill:
A thick morning mist rose around the pond in the waterfowl
enclosure at Sherwell Zoo. The tall figure of Victor loomed out of the mist on
the far side of the pond. Ryan, in his capacity as Head Keeper, had been called
out of bed at 6 am by a clearly enraged Victor, who had told him that “A
calamity has befallen us. I will meet you at the waterfowl enclosure. The
nature of the incident should make itself obvious to you there.”
This cryptic call had led Ryan to the zoo on Sunday morning,
mind racing with concerns about what the hell Victor might want with him this
time. His boss had a tendency to make unusual demands of him: keep this
briefcase in your house for the weekend, start putting caffeine tablets in the
sloth feed, and post this threatening letter to People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals…That sort of thing.
Ryan noticed that, on this occasion, he was not alone with
Victor. He spotted the diminutive form of Samaria Bougainville heading across
the wet grass towards the bird house. Samaria was a junior keeper, whose
eagerness to involve herself with nature (which sprang from an eye-wateringly
expensive bohemian education in North London) ensured she was normally roped in
to help with unpleasant tasks at the zoo. Her presence was not a good sign,
Ryan thought apprehensively.
“Ryan! Ryan! Come over here, I need you over here right away
boy!” barked Victor. Ryan started to jog around the pond towards Victor. When
he was about halfway round, he caught sight of a lumpen and bloodied shape at
Victor’s feet. It looked like one of the spoonbills had been killed. Christ, he
hoped it wasn’t one of the black-faced spoonbills. They were the rarest species
of waterfowl on display at Sherwell Zoo, and Victor had a particular penchant
for them.
“They killed him! They killed him Ryan!” screamed Victor at
the Head Keeper, who had arrived at the scene and had paused to catch his
breath.
“They killed who, Victor?” asked Ryan.
“Luciano. They killed Luciano!” Victor’s voice was cracking
with emotion. Oh fuck, not Luciano: this was going to be a nightmare, thought
Ryan. “Um, are you sure that that was Luciano?” he asked hesitantly.
Victor reached down into the grass with a gloved hand and lifted
the decapitated corpse of a spoonbill up by the left leg with an air of morbid
triumph. The bird’s long neck waggled in the air, spurting blood across
Victor’s trenchcoat, whilst a lung flopped uselessly from its ravaged chest.
“Christ Victor, put that thing down, it’s bleeding all over
the place.” Ryan said without thinking, and instantly regretted it.
“That thing?!” exclaimed Victor “That thing?! He had a name
you impudent boy, he had a name!”
At this, Victor fell to his knees and buried his
tear-streaked face in what remained of Luciano’s breast. Even by Victor’s
scenery-chewing lunatic behavioural standards, this was some pretty
melodramatic stuff, Ryan thought as he watched his middle-aged boss weeping
into the spoonbill’s entrails.
“Is everything alright over there?” called Samaria. No, of
course it isn’t, you stupid fucking hippy, Ryan thought angrily. This was worse
than the time that that pit-bull attacked a goat in the petting zoo: at least
then Victor had kept his face out of the remains. “Er, not really…I think you’d
better come over here and help Victor!” Ryan called back. “Alright, hold on,
I’ll be right over!” Samaria replied.
Victor’s sobs became louder, and he started to rock back and
forth. Ryan noticed that some faecal matter had escaped Luciano’s guts and was
creeping through Victor’s hair. He averted his gaze and watched Samaria as she
ran towards the pair. When she caught sight of what Victor was doing, she
suppressed a slight retch before speaking: “I’ve checked the bird house, and as
far as I can tell, it’s just Luciano that got attacked.” Victor seemed
oblivious, lost in his repulsive grief ritual. Ryan took Samaria aside and
downwind of what was left of the spoonbill.
“When was all this found?” he asked Samaria. “Um, I’m not
absolutely sure. I was finishing up at the nocturnal mammal house when Victor
called me. He was already quite bad when I got to the waterfowl enclosure.”
Samaria replied.
“Oh, I see. And, it is definitely Luciano that was killed?”
said Ryan. “Yeah, we checked his leg ring, then Victor kind of went silent for
a bit and just sort of stood there. I said that I’d go and check if the other
birds were OK: he didn’t really say anything…” Samaria trailed off and the pair
stood silently watching Victor’s anguish.
After a minute or so, Ryan collected his thoughts
sufficiently to suggest that “Er…maybe one of us should, you know, stop him
from…doing that. I mean, that cannot be healthy…”
“I suppose we could try and stop him…but he is grieving
though, I mean, it’s important for him to get the grief out somehow. If he
feels the need to emotionalise things in this way, maybe we should just let
things take their course. I mean, he could be in shock or something, if we try
and separate him from Luciano, he might faint or have a fit or something…” Samaria
replied.
“Well, if he keeps doing what he’s doing, he’ll probably get
bird flu, so I really think that one of us should take that thing away from
him.” Said Ryan.
“Well, alright, I suppose, if you want to stop him, go
ahead, but I think maybe we should let him carry on until, you know, he feels able to stop.” Samaria fiddled
nervously with one of her necklaces of hand-carved wooden beads as she spoke.
Ryan winced as Victor’s hard grip on the corpse caused a jet
of warm blood to arc out of its right flank and fall, hissing, onto the grass.
“No. No, we can’t let him carry on with this. It’d be totally irresponsible.
He’s likely to get sick as it is. We really do have to intervene I think.”
At this point, Victor suddenly drew his bloodied face out of
the dead spoonbill and whispered:
“I know who did this. I know who did this to him.”
